This is a brief historical perspective of Americans of Asian Indian
origin. Having immigrated from India to the USA, I have developed a curiosity
about people like myself who have moved to "Amerika". For a long time I hardly
knew anything about "Indians in America". Frankly, I didn't care to know. After
all I was just a student in the USA who wanted to get a great education and
return home to India. But circumstances changed and I decided to become an immigrant
to the USA. It was at this point that I wondered about the Indian immigrants
who had come before me and made similar decisions to stay.

I'd always assumed that Indians never really came to the USA until the
1960s. However, I remembered vaguely, from my high school history lessons, that
there had been a group of Indian expatriates who had formed a party, called
the "Ghadhar Party", in the USA to assist in India's struggle for freedom from
British colonial dominion. So I had an inkling that there was more to the story
than I knew.

Well, the experience of researching and learning about the history of Indian
immigration to the USA has been enlightening, to say the least. Mind-blowing
is more like it! I had no idea. I've wanted to share this knowledge with people
and that's why I've written this perspective. I don't really have the time to
write in more detail, so please forgive the brief nature of this document. I
have included some references at the end and I strongly encourage interested
persons to look them up.

The earliest record of an Indian traveling to the USA is that of a young Indian
man from Madras who may have visited Massachusetts in 1790. As Salem developed
its trade with India during the next decade, young Indians worked on the India
wharves at Crownshield and Derby, two of the larger shipyards. In 1851, six
Indians marched in the Salem Fourth of July parade under the banner of the "East
India Marine Society". Most of these men are believed to have married American
women of African origin and integrated themselves into that community.

After the American civil war, American consuls did everything they could to
stop Indians from immigrating to the USA (That hasn't changed even today, has
it?). The consul in Bombay told a group of Parsees that "the United States
would not be a good place for them". The consul in Calcutta strongly opposed
efforts to remove racial discrimination in India because as he stated, "it
was bad to bring Europeans and Americans down to the level of non-Christian
civilizations". He also discouraged Mormon missionaries from taking converts
back to the USA in the 1880s.

Regardless of the efforts of a few bigots, a few hundred Indian traders did
come to the USA in the 1880s. They traded in silk, linens, spices and other
goods from India. This period was also witness to burgeoning interest in Indian
culture, philosophy and religions among American intellectuals. Ralph Waldo
Emerson and Henry David Thoreau studied Indian philosophy and religions with
great zeal. Walt Whitman wrote the poem "Passage to India" in 1868.
The number of people in Boston who were interested in Indian philosophy and
religions grew to the extent that it led to the coining of the term "The
Boston Brahmin". "The Rajah's Daughter" and "Cataract of
the Ganges" were plays performed at the Boston theater during this period.
The song "The Hindu Girl" was quite popular. Not only did the Boston
Brahmins read about India, but they also bought Bengal ginghams and other fine
goods on India Street. The ships that brought these goods tied up at India wharf.
This period of interest in things Indian reached a high point when Swami Vivekananda,
a fluent English speaking Hindu monk, addressed the World Parliament of Religions
in Chicago in the year 1893. The interest he generated led to the establishment
of "The Vedanta Society" centers all across America. Perhaps as a
result of the goodwill generated between the American and Indian peoples of
this period, the American people shipped large quantities of food to India to
help Indians endure the famine (of 1897) caused by British colonial looting.
Cosmopolitan magazine ran a scathing rebuke of the British for spending a hundred
million dollars on the Queen's jubilee while at the same time causing millions
of Indians to starve.

In the late 1890s and early 1900s a number of Indians from Punjab migrated
to the western United States. During this period economic conditions in the
Punjab state of India had worsened because of severe exploitation by the British.
This exploitation, which usually took the form of the British forcing Indian
farmers to grow cash crops such as Indigo rather than food crops, caused severe
famine and impoverished many farmers. In order to support families, the youngest
sons of families were encouraged to emigrate to find work and supplement the
family income. A number of these men were Sikhs, though a few Hindus and Muslims
migrated as well. They usually came by boat through Hong Kong and disembarked
either in Vancouver or Angel Island (the Asian equivalent of Ellis Island which
holds terrible memories of oppression and racism). The Sikh temple in Hong Kong
provided support along the way. Most of these young men in their early 20s took
jobs in lumber mills and the railroad when they arrived in the Pacific Northwest.
Several hundred Indians worked in lumber mills settled in Bellingham in Washington
State. A few hundred to at times over a thousand Indians worked on the railroads
in California. One particularly well documented Indian work group was led by
Tuly Singh Johl and helped build the Marysville railway station in California.

However, after the racist violence against Indians, perpetrated by the European
labor unions in the lumber mills (see section titled
"The Riots"), a number of Indians moved to the San Joaquin valley
and the central California alluvial plain to work as agricultural laborers.
Most of these workers were well-suited for agricultural work because they came
from the agrarian society of Punjab and the Californian farming conditions were
similar to those they were used to at home in India. They made more money as
farm workers and through long hours of hard work typically saved enough money
to buy their own land to farm. Hundreds of Indians settled in the Sacramento,
Imperial and San Joaquin valleys. The Imperial valley in particular was considered
so hard to farm that it was usually pronounced "unfit for the white man"
so "handing it over to Indians" was acceptable. The Indians in these
valleys thrived. They worked so hard and did so well in farming that they developed
reputations as being "a safe bet" when it came to banks lending money.
According to the 1919 census of land in the state of California, Indians owned
88,000 acres of land in California. 52% of this land was in the Sacramento valley.
In the Imperial valley they owned 32,000 acres. However, most of these Indians
were destined to lose their land under the 1913 California Alien Land law. This
law held that certain aliens (specifically Japanese and Indians) were ineligible
to own land if they weren't citizens. Pursuant to this a number of Indians were
denied citizenship and their lands usurped. The supreme court of the USA, in
November 1923, upheld this law and claimed that it did not violate the fourteenth
amendment. A few months later California strengthened the law, disallowing Indians
from even leasing land. The net effect was that Indians could ONLY work as agricultural
workers. However, by this time some Indians had born children and a large number
of Indians transferred title to their American born children. The road to prosperity
in agriculture was however, severely restricted for other Indian immigrants.

During the same period that some Indians were immigrating to the USA, as laborers
in logging, railroading and agriculture, there was another group of Indians
who migrated to the USA as students in Universities. A number of these students
went to the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University where
they organized themselves into groups supporting the cause of Indian freedom
from British dominion. The story of these students is covered in more detail
in the section "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Unless ".

Sadly however, the tide was changing. As groups of Indian men continued to
migrate to the American west to work in lumber yards and the railroad, the laborers
who were Americans of European origin started complaining. These laborers belonged
to organized labor movements that wanted to maintain higher wage levels in the
lumber and railroad industries. The colonial British government which ruled
India was also pressuring the American government to put an end to Indian student
support for the Indian freedom struggle. The American government willingly and
actively conspired with the British to monitor and deport these Indian students.
Most of the deportees were murdered by the British upon their return to India.
At the same time the political forces in Washington were becoming increasingly
racist and supportive of British colonialism. Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 called
for an American conquest of the Philippines because it was an "inevitable
march of events" where the "dominant race" was the conqueror.
While addressing Congress in 1904, he legitimized British colonial rule of India
by comparing it with American rule in the Philippines.

The mob of over 500 angry racist men kicked open the doors to the waterfront
barracks. Some of them grabbed all the "hindoos'" belongings and threw
them onto the street. If they found any money or jewelry they pocketed it. The
others went after the "rag-heads" themselves. They dragged the Indians
from their beds and punched and kicked them. The ones that jumped out of the
buildings to escape injured themselves in the process or were caught and beaten
outside. Other rioters attacked a tenement on Forest Street. Once they were
done beating the "hindoos" they burnt the bunkhouses. The date was
Thursday, September 5, 1907 and the place was Bellingham, a frontier town in
Washington State.

The police did nothing. Well actually that's not quite accurate. They watched!
In fact, the police chief turned over City Hall to the mob so the mob could
collect the Indians and hold them there. He claimed it was to protect the Indians!
Earlier, at the insistence of the mob, his policemen had released two youths
who had been caught stoning Indians. They didn't interfere with the mob's rampage
after that.

Earlier in the evening of that same day, racist Europeans who wanted to "drive
out the hindoos" had chased and beaten two Indians walking on C Street.
In the days preceding the major riots Indians had been beaten in defense of
"white womanhood", windows in two Indian houses had been smashed and
numerous other hate crimes were committed.

The Indians lost their belongings and savings. They had nowhere to live anymore.
They were beaten and injured. They had no hope of any protection from the city
authorities. They didn't have any jobs because the lumber yard owners who had
employed them had been intimidated by the racist mob to fire them. And last
but not the least, they faced death threats and continued violence if they stayed
in Bellingham. Bewildered by the intensity of the hatred they left to find work
elsewhere.

There were NO prosecutions of the marauders in the Bellingham riots.

The Bellingham riots triggered similar riots and "expulsions" throughout
the pacific northwest. Some of the Indians who were driven from Bellingham went
to Everett, another town in Washington state sixty miles south of Bellingham.
On November 5th, 1907, in Everett, Washington ,over five hundred armed men attacked
and beat the Indians and robbed and destroyed their belongings. The result was
the same as in Bellingham.

Most newspapers editorials in the west including the San Francisco Chronicle
condemned the violence but proclaimed that they understood and supported the
intentions of the mobs for a "white west coast".

you were an Indian under British colonial dominion. There was no liberty
in colonial India. Regardless of whether they were in India or America, Indians
were not free and carried the yoke of British persecution. Life for Indians
under British rule was miserable. India had never experienced a famine until
the British conquered it and perpetrated two famines. India produced close to
25% of the world's GDP before the British invaded; by the time the British left
after looting the country for 300 years, India produced less than 1% of the
world's GDP. Happiness for Indians under British rule was a dream to be experienced
once the British were driven out. Given these and other horrendous circumstances
it is understandable why Indians longed to be free and fought for their independence
from British colonial rule.

President Theodore Roosevelt was a strong supporter of British colonialism
in India. In fact in an address to a Methodist Episcopal church group in January
1909, he stated that he considered British rule of India to be "..the greatest
feat of the kind since the Roman Empire one of the most admirable
achievements of the white race during the past two centuries ". (Pardon
me while I puke..). His feelings would set the tone for collusion between the
British and American governments to squelch efforts by Indian students (in the
"land of the free" - America) to support freedom in India.

Even though Roosevelt and his cronies created an environment of hostility a
number of Indians involved in the freedom struggle were able to influence and
draw support from more enlightened sections of American society. Lala Lajpat
Rai, an Indian freedom fighter, visited the Boston Anti Imperialist League.
The league's president, Moorfield Storey, a committed racial egalitarian, strongly
criticized British rule in India. This also set the stage for future interactions
with the Indian National Congress and the arrival of Indian students and intellectuals,
sympathetic to the Indian freedom struggle, on American shores. The first recorded
Indian student arrived on the west coast in the winter of 1901-1902. The American
consul in Calcutta at the time, Ohio Civil war veteran William Michael encouraged
a number of students and even wrote introduction letters for them (far cry from
the problems the consuls nowadays create for Indian students wishing to study
in the USA). He would however change his attitude once the students got involved
in supporting Indian freedom from the British.

Two of the primary organizers of the students and the support for the Indian
freedom struggle among people in America were Taraknath Das and Har Dayal. A
22 year old Das arrived in Seattle on July 16, 1906 and later enrolled at the
University of California at Berkeley as a student. Later he started a newspaper
named "Free Hindusthan", dedicated to Indian freedom, in Vancouver
and organized the Indians there. In 1908 he moved to Vermont after being harassed
by British intelligence agents and American authorities. Here he enrolled in
the Vermont National Guard, but was removed after the British again raised concerns
about Indian freedom fighters receiving military training in the USA. He obtained
his American citizenship in 1914. The story of Das is very interesting and eventually
ends with his de-naturalization as an American citizen (see the section titled
"Brown Aryans"). I strongly encourage people to read more about him,
its a fascinating story. After reading his story, the feeling one is left with
is best described in the disgusted words of his American wife of European descent,
"In America today (that is the 1910s), as well as in other countries, there
exist double standards of international morality - one for the superior White
man and the other for the Asiatics. The people of India are enslaved Asiatics,
and they cannot, under the existing circumstances, expect to have equal rights
with the superior Whites". I sometimes wonder if some of what she said
isn't true even today, though things seem much better now!

The second leader to plague the British government with his support of Indian
freedom was based in the Bay Area as well and his name was Har Dayal. He picked
up where Das had left things when he moved east. Dayal first came to the USA
to study Buddhism at the library in Harvard. He moved west in 1911 and took
up a lectureship at Stanford teaching Indian Philosophy. He was a socialist
and his involvement in these activities led the Stanford administration to dislike
him and he resigned before they could fire him. He then moved down to Berkeley
and organized the students there. He also contacted the Indian laborers in California
and started organizing them. His cross community activities alarmed the British,
who couldn't fathom a united Indian opposition to British rule of India. Dayal
worked with both the California Khalsa Diwan, a Sikh religious community group,
and the Hindustan Association to build support for Indian freedom. He also worked
to oppose the exclusion of Indians from America. After raising money from the
Indian community he founded a paper titled "Ghadhar" (means revolt
in Urdu) as a means of communication among Indians in America and to work for
India's freedom. The first issue, published on November 1, 1913, ran the advertisment,

This newspaper sent shivers up the British spine. Some of the Ghadhar publications
made their way to India and the possibility of an Indian revolt frightened the
British. They feverishly worked with their spies and informants to discredit
the Ghadhar party and prosecute its members. After significant pressure from
the British government the American government issued an arrest warrant for
Dayal. Strangely enough Dayal was arrested, on March 25, 1920, for being an
"anarchist or advocating the overthrow of the United States government
by force." Since Dayal had never advocated harming America, the trumped
up nature of the charges and his strong defense led to his subsequent release.
However, the British had infiltrated the Ghadhar party with informants by now.
Any member of the party who returned to India was either promptly imprisoned
or murdered by the British.

One of the primary intelligence agents hired by the British to spy on Indians
in America was a man named W. C. Hopkinson. He was first hired by the Canadian
government in 1909, but later worked extensively with the British government
in India. He was instrumental in harassing both Das and Dayal. He was the pivotal
person working with the British government and American officials to counter
Indian freedom activities and to persecute Indians. With the blessing of the
British government he hired private investigators and informants to keep track
of Indians in the USA. He worked very hard with the British diplomatic staff
in the USA to convince the sympathetic US State Department, Department of Justice
and the Immigration authorities to prosecute Indians under trumped up charges
for even participating in supporting the Indian freedom struggle. He was eventually
assassinated by Mewa Singh in a Canadian courtroom where Hopkinson had appeared
to testify against other Indians.

After Dayal, Ram Chandra took over the Ghadhar press. He and a few other Indians
in the USA looked to Germany for support of the Indian freedom movement. During
the war with Germany, the United States and Britain opposed Indian freedom while
Germany supported it. So the obvious attraction of these Indian freedom fighters
to Germany is understandable. It seems particularly hypocritical that while
the United States was fighting Germany, ostensibly to further the cause of self-determination,
they were also undermining the Indian nationalists in America. The British planted
the idea of a "Hindu Conspiracy" and the Canadian and American justice
departments willingly took it upon themselves to prove this shaky claim. The
"Hindu Conspiracy" trial of 1917 held in San Francisco is a symbol
of this farce. On April 6, 1917 President Wilson signed the house resolution
declaring war on Germany. Immediately, that morning itself, Assistant Attorney
General Charles Warren (who was working closely with Frank Polk - in charge
of neutrality matters in the State Department) ordered the United States Attorney
in San Francisco, John W. Preston to arrest the Indians in the "Hindu-German
Conspiracy". Ram Chandra (of the Ghadhar Party) and sixteen other Indian
freedom fighters were arrested. It is interesting to note here that Warren didn't
sign the papers to arrest German agents until that afternoon. So in America's
war against Germany the Indian freedom fighters were arrested before the Germans
spies were (makes me sick!). Most of these men were politically opposed to British
hegemony of India and had used "the land of the free"-America- to
launch their fight for India's freedom. They were charged and convicted of seditious
activities. Equating the political support they received from Germany to oppose
British rule in India to a conspiracy was far-fetched and tenuous. Hearsay evidence
rules were loosened and British documents were used to convict them. The similarity
between the Indians' aspiration for freedom and the American revolution against
British colonialism was ignored. It is a disgraceful incident in American history,
where the "land of liberty" was insidiously tricked by the colonialist
British into persecuting Indians who held the American ideals of freedom and
liberty close to heart.

It is noteworthy to mention that when Indians finally won their freedom (on
August 15, 1947) and threw the British invaders out, they chose to start the
constitution of the newly created secular, democratic, republic of India with
the words "We the People of India " (inspired by the American
constitution). I believe that this is the ultimate symbol of the fact that in
their hearts and at the core of their beings Indians and Americans cherish and
value the same essential absolute ethics about Life, Liberty and the pursuit
of Happiness. It is unfortunate that a few powerful and bigoted people in history
and today tarnish this unity of purpose.

The hoodlums of the Bellingham and Everett mobs provided a violent catalyst
for the actions and legislation by politicians in Washington D.C. to exclude,
restrict and remove Indians from the USA. The Asian Exclusion League(AEL) provided
a medium through which the more extreme racists and the politicians could meet
to achieve their objectives. The British colonial government, in its mad rush
to retain its control over India, actively spied on and conspired with the all
too willing American government to crush any support among Indians in America
for the Indian freedom movement. The environment of hatred and bigotry created
by these forces led to very interesting legislative (by the U.S. Congress) and
judicial (by U.S. Supreme Court decisions) maneuvers to remove Indians from
America.

A number of Indians entered the USA through Angel Island (The Asian immigrants'
equivalent of Ellis Island. Though Asians were generally excluded or harassed
beyond belief at Angel.) in San Francisco between 1908 and 1910. The immigration
inspector at this port, Hart North, allowed Indians to enter because there were
no laws restricting them. The Asian Exclusion League in collusion with a number
politicians was conspiring to restrict Indian immigration. The AEL complained
to anyone and everyone who would listen about North's policy of letting Indians
in. The democrats courted the AEL for their political support and in exchange
supported restricting Indians. From 1904 through 1911, the AEL maintained a
continuous pressure on the US government to restrict Indian immigration. In
1909 they complained to the Secretary of commerce and labor that Indians should
not be allowed in. When nothing was done, they spread rumors that Indians were
bringing in exotic diseases. This created mass hysteria and put pressure on
the politicians. Racist newspapers like the San Francisco Call supported the
AEL and printed wild stories about hordes of Indians coming to America. North
continued letting Indians in. In the meantime the AEL spread rumors about Indians
being polygamists, about their health being bad, about them being "filthy
and unsanitary" and so on and so forth. They wrote to President Taft. On
October 27, 1910 Taft suspended North and ordered an investigation. The stage
was set by precedent to exclude Indians from the USA. There was no law specifically
to exclude them, but there was an understanding that they were to be excluded
by any means possible (that hasn't changed much even today has it?). Furthermore
the threat of getting dismissed if you let them in was enough to put a chilling
effect on Indian admissions.

However, the tacit understanding to exclude Indians was not enough for the
racist AEL or its political cronies. They kept on pushing ahead. The next step
was to achieve legislative exclusion of Indians. However, Indians were still
considered to be of Aryan descent and hence could not be excluded based on their
race (Europeans were considered to be of Aryan descent too). An immigration
commission composed of racist exclusionists reported in 1910 that Indians were
the "least desirable race". John Raker, a racist democratic congressman,
and Anthony W. Caminetti, who became President Wilson's immigration commissioner,
did the most to restrict Indian immigration. Both of these men pushed for and
finally secured the passage of the "Barred Zone Act" on February 4th
1917. This act effectively said that certain people from the barred zone, which
included India, could not immigrate to the USA. Of course there was a loophole
to admit white persons from the barred zone.

Even the fact that they had secured legislative banning of Indian immigration
did not satisfy Caminetti and his AEL cronies. They pushed to have the Indians
already in the USA deported. However, a large number of these Indians had legally
obtained American citizenship and it was impossible to deport a citizen. This
meant that they would first have to be de-naturalized and then deported. The
Supreme Court came through on this account. A number of Indians such as Taraknath
Das had applied for citizenship and were granted it by different judges because
they couldn't decide if they were "white" or not. There are strange
stories of judges taking "close" looks at Indians to determine if
they were white. Though their complexion was darker it was similar to a number
of southern Europeans and their features were characteristically "white".
However, the Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte was convinced that Indians
were not white and he challenged a number of these naturalizations. Interestingly
enough, the census of 1910 counted the Indians separately but noted that "pure
blood Hindus" were "ethnically white". The first real challenge
to this came when Bhagat Singh Thind's application for naturalization was rejected.
This man was a veteran of the United States Army and had been drafted during
World War I but was still being denied citizenship. The case went all the way
to the United States Supreme Court. Justice George Sutherland delivered the
unanimous opinion of the court (on February 19, 1923) in which he argued that
since the "common man's" definition of white did not correspond to
"Caucasian", which Indians were, they could not be naturalized. The
court stated that even though Indians were Caucasian they were not white and
furthermore since Congress had passed a "Barred Zone Act" excluding
Indian immigration it seemed like Indians were not allowed immigrants. Interestingly
enough this is a reversal of previous verdict rendered by the same court (and
Justice Sutherland in particular) in the October 1922 Ozawa case in which Sutherland
clearly mentions Indians as Caucasians. In this verdict he mentions that Ozawa
is not eligible for naturalization because he is Japanese and only Caucasians,
including Indians, are eligible for citizenship. So in effect the court threw
legal precedent, history, science and logic to come up with the flawed Thind
decision. The Justice Department took this as a green light to de-naturalize
Indians who had been naturalized even before the verdict. This is one of the
few instances when a verdict was applied retroactively.

There is an interesting case of de-naturalization against a lawyer, S. G. Pandit
of Indian descent. The justice department filed a petition to de-naturalize
him. Congress had passed a law to prevent interracial marriages, requiring that
white women lose their citizenship if they married a person not eligible for
citizenship. But since Pandit had obtained his citizenship legally and his wife
married him legally, removing his citizenship would imply that his wife would
lose hers ex post facto. The judge agreed with Pandit and denied the justice
department's petition. The justice department appealed the case to the supreme
court but they lost the case when the court refused a writ of certiorari.

However, the de-naturalization of Indians continued. California took the precedent
one step further and stripped these Indians of land they legally owned. Tens
of thousands of acres of land were usurped. Many Indians transferred their land
to their American born children. California tried to deny citizenship to American
children of Indian descent who were born in the USA. The attempt failed. However,
the net effect was that a number of Indians lost their livelihoods. The San
Francisco Examiner commented that these policies were not "race discrimination",
but "race preservation". Fancy words for robbery.

These actions in America led Mahatma Gandhi to declare that "America had
nothing to give India and India, for the present, had nothing to give to America".
The Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore refused an invitation, by the "Atlantic"
magazine, to visit the USA and criticized the "utter lack of freedom with
which the atmosphere is charged". So much for the "Land of the free"!
A few powerful racists like Caminetti, the AEL and Sutherland succeeded in undermining
the lofty principles that the USA was founded on.

The "Barred Zone Act" of 1917 and the "Thind decision"
of 1923 put Indian immigration to the USA into a deep freeze. There were few
interactions between Indians and Americans. In the 1930s a few extremely successful
Indian professionals and businessmen re-started interactions between the Indians
and Americans. Sirdar Jagjit Singh founded the India League of America in 1938.
Mubarak Ali Khan founded the Indian Welfare League in 1937. Indians continued
lobbying for granting citizenship rights for Indians. In the early 1940s President
Franklin Roosevelt attempted to suggest dominion status for India, but (that
cigar chomping, fat obnoxious, pompous lout) Winston Churchil of Britain refused
to entertain the idea of Indian freedom. Thousands of American troops had been
stationed in India for the Second World War to fight Japan. The resentment against
American troops in India grew because of America's hypocritical policy of supporting
British colonial hegemony over India. Republican Clare Booth Luce and Democrat
Emmanuel Celler introduced bills to life restrictions on Indian immigration
as a few previous bills had done for the Chinese and Japanese. However, the
Committee on Immigration and Naturalization stonewalled until President Roosevelt
sent William Phillips (in March 1945), his personal representative who had visited
India, to testify secretly for the bill. The house passed the bill in October
1945, but Southern Democrats and Midwestern Republicans blocked it in the senate.
The bill allowing Indian naturalization and immigration was finally passed in
July 1946.

Since the doors opened, the saga of Indian immigration to the USA has been
one of unparalleled success. Dalip Singh Saund an Indian from California was
elected to Congress in 1956. He was re-elected twice, but his term ended when
he had a debilitating stroke in 1962. Other Indians have made attempts to run
for political office since (mostly in the 1980 and 1990s). Indians have formed
PACs and are active participants in the political process. However, the political
power of Indians is virtually non-existent compared to other more vocal groups.

The detailed statistics pertaining to Indians in the USA is something I intend
to cover in another article but I'll try to maintain a historical perspective
in my discussion here. The number of Indians coming to the USA until 1965 remained
in the hundreds. It has picked up significantly since then. In the 1980's and
1990's tens of thousands of Indians came to the USA. Most of them are extremely
well-educated and well-qualified professionals. The census department reports
that over 85% of Indians in the USA have graduated from high school, over 65%
have college degrees and around 43% have graduate or professionals degrees.
These educational levels are the highest of any group in the USA (including
whites and other Asian groups). The Indian family's median income is the highest
in the country as well.

I found this information to be extremely eye-opening. I believe that one has
to learn from history and better oneself. The history of Indian immigration
to the USA is tortured and painfully racist. However, the fact that things changed
for the better and the incredible success of Indian immigrants today is cause
for optimism.

Throughout, history, there have people who have tried to harm America and its
people of Indian descent by imposing their racist beliefs. However, this evil
(like all evil) has been overcome by good. The evil of racist policies still
lurks in the background and constantly needs to be fought and defeated. Immigration
bills, one sponsored by Senator Alan Simpson in 1996 (which was defeated thanks
to Bill Gates) and another passed in 1997 sponsored by Representative Lamar
Smith, are significant threats to a fair immigration system. The very fact that
these legislators target their bills towards Asian immigration is a sad and
painful reminder of our history. The passing of the visa lottery system is another
significant threat to fairness.

The behavior of visa officers in American consulates in India and immigration
officers in the USA who deal with Indians too often reflects terrible racist
and ethnic prejudices. From my conversations with an acquaintance who worked
as a visa officer for the State Department it is apparent that these people
are trained to discriminate against Indians. My own experiences with visa officers
and immigration officers confirms this belief. I will do everything within my
power to fight these racist policies. It is vital that America not slip back
into the sordid policies of its past. Of course, things are much better than
they were, but it is important to keep the trend from reversing.

The sentiments I have raised in this epilogue deserve more detailed analysis
and I will try to deal with them in separate documents.

Finally, I want to emphasize that I believe America is a wonderful country.
I believe most Americans (white, yellow, black, brown, green, blue - regardless
of what color or ethnicity they are) are decent people. The purpose of this
perspective is not to say "see what the white people did". It is to
say "see what mistakes were made by people in the past. Let's avoid them
in the future".